V. I. Lenin

Is This the Turn of the Tide?

Published:Sotsial-DemokratNo. 18, November 16 (29),.

      Published according to the text inSotsial-Demokrat.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1974],

      Moscow,Volume 16,

      pages320-322.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
      © 2004

      Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
      terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

Thepresent issue was already set up when we received the
St. Petersburg and Moscow newspapers of November 12. However inadequate the
information supplied by the legal press, it is evident beyond doubt that in
a number of cities there have been students’ meetings, demonstrations and
street processions with protests against capital punishment and with
speeches against the government. The St. Petersburg demonstration of
November 11, even according to the information of the quite
Octobrist-mindedRusskiye

Vedomosti,{1}drew a gathering ofnot less than 10,000
peopleon the Nevsky. The same newspaper reports that on the
St. Petersburg side “large numbers of workers joined the procession as it
passed the People’s House. At Tuchkov Bridge the procession came to a
halt. The police were quite powerless to stop the procession and the crowd
proceeded with songs and flags to the Bolshoi Prospekt on Vasilyevsky
Ostrov. Only at the university did the police manage to disperse the
crowd.”

Thepolice and the troops, of course, behaved in the true-blue Russian
way.

Whilewe shall postpone to the next issue our appraisal of this
unmistakably democratic upsurge, we cannot abstain from saying a few words
about the attitude of the various parties to the
demonstration.Russkiye Vedomosti, which on the 11th published afalsereport that the demonstration had been called off, reported
on the 12th that the Social-Democrats had adopted no decision, while some
of their deputies had even expressed their disapproval, and only the
Trudoviks in the resolution they adopted considered it impossible to hinder
the demonstration. We have no doubt that this report which is so
discreditable to our Social-Democraticdeputies, is false; in all probability it is just as much a malicious
invention ofRusskiye Vedomostias their report of the day before
that the demonstration had been called off.Golos

Moskvy{2}reported on the 12th that “with the exception of the
Social-Democrats the deputies of all parties disapprove of the students
coming out on the streets”.

Itis clear that the Cadet and Octobrist newspapers are very widely
“swerving from the truth”, intimidated by the utterly absurd and
ludicrous cries from the Right that “the springs preparing the
demonstration are being manipulated from the Taurida Palace”.

Thatthe Cadets behaved in an unworthy manner is a fact. On the 11th,
the day of the demonstration,Rechpublished a manifesto of the
Cadet deputies calling for the demonstration not to be held. The reasons
urged both in the manifesto and inRech’sleading article are
truly infamous: “not to cast a shadow over” the days of mourning!  “to
hold manifestations, to associate them with the memory of Tolstoy” is to
display “a lack of sincere affection for his sacred memory”!! and so on,
in a purely Octobrist spirit (compare the leading article inGolos
Moskvyon the 11th, with almost identical phrases).

Fortunatelythe vile spoke thrust in the wheel of democracy by the
Cadets had no effect. The demonstration was held just the same. And if the
police news-sheetRossiyacontinues to blame the Cadets for
everything, even contriving to detect a note of “incitement” in their
manifesto, in the Duma, according toGolos Moskvy, the Octobrists
and the extreme Rights (Shulgin) appreciated theservicerendered
by the Cadets, recognising that they were “opposed to the demonstration”.

Ifthere is anyone who has not learned from the entire course of the
Russian revolution that the cause of the movement for emancipation in
Russia ishopelessas long as it is led by the Cadets, as long as
he is unable to safeguard himself from the treachery of the Cadets, let him
study and learn from the facts of contemporary politics, the history of the
demonstration of November 11.

Atthe first sign of a democratic revival the Cadets begin their dirty
games again.

Wenote also a report inGolos Moskvythat the workers
approached the students with a view to holding a grand demonstration on the
14th. There is probably some truth in it, for today (November 15 [28]) the
Paris papers report the arrest in St. Petersburg of 13 members of the
bureau of trade unions for anattemptto organise a workers’
demonstration.

{1}Russkiye Vedomosti(Russian Recorder)—a daily
newspaper published in Moscow from 1863 onwards by a group of Moscow
University liberal professors and Zemstvo leaders. It voiced the interests
of the liberal landlords and bourgeoisie. In 1905 it became the organ of
the Right wing of the Constitutional-Democrats. Alter the October
Revolution it was closed down.

{2}Golos Moskvy(Voice of Moscow)—a daily newspaper,
the organ of the Octobrists, the counter-revolutionary party of the big
industrial bourgeoisie and big landlords. It was published in Moscow from
December 1906 to June 1915.